The Scam of The Century!

Aside from losing over 1.13 million people, the United States is thought to have lost billions of dollars in pandemic relief fund fraud, according to the most recent Associated Press analysis, published this week.

The analysis discovered that fraudsters took more than US$280 billion in relief cash, while another $123 billion was lost or misspent.

“Combined, the loss represents 10 percent of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in aid,” according to the report.

According to the analysis, this was the worst heist in U.S. history, with criminals stealing billions of dollars in government money intended to stabilize an economy in free fall.

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[beccangavin]

My brother and his wife did fraudulent unemployment claims. They used the money they scammed to buy a new house. My friends husband lost his job when his boss took money from the government then closed his business and also bought a new house. They definitely needed better restrictions to prevent scams.

[samroot]

I live in Miami which is pretty much the epicenter of scams in the US. During COVID they sold out of boats, luxury items, and supercars.


Apparently crime does pay and pay very very well.

[swingingvoter]

As an Australian, I am glad you briefly mentioned the Australian bushfires being used as a opportunity to scam. Both in Australia and internationally, there were lots of organisations and “gofundme’s” etc seeking money. I was disgusted, and was pretty sure they were mostly scams, although it seemed rude to say so at the time. I could say a lot more on this topic.

[FuttBukkr]

The most frustrating part about this is the who legitimately needed assistance and didn’t apply bc they were worried about doing something incorrect/get in trouble bc there was such a lack of clarity 🙋‍♂️

[hammer-fngm]

I still get scam calls and emails telling me I can get up to $26, 000 per employee for my business as compensation for the inconvenience during the pandemic. They say they will handle all of the paperwork and the check will be made to me.

[Croptopkin]

When you make fraud less risky and pay more than honest work, this is the natural conclusion. We have created a world where the accumulation of capital is placed above morality, it's not surprising.

[julesvanlaar]

When I was young I heard a story from my dad (a farmer) that there was a drought in the 1970s, my dad used the government support to buy fodder for the livestock (and kept the receipts) while other farmers had bought themselves a new car or tractor from the money but they had to pay back all the support while my dad never had to pay anything back.

[tmcthree]

I'm sad, but honestly I don't know if it's because of the state of humanity or that I didn't manage get any of the money.

[BangBangBang.]

I was locked up for 52 days in county jail for WEED this year from February to April. While locked up, the county jail was telling people who haven't filed for benefits or were unaware they qualified for them to file including providing instruction to them about it'll come to them in jail. What these inmates don't know is if the $1200 came to the jail, its on their account and subject to deductions by the jail such as the $2/day sustenance fee. The county jail rarely has people pay back unless they take the money on your account when you're released. I had ~$300 on my account when I was released thinking I'd get a check which I was going to use for a medical marijuana card so I wouldn't have another county jail visit later on.

Nope, county jail took that money and said I owed an additional $55 for medical visits/medication so I paid that crap off.

99% of people released have no money on their account or used it all up (I debated this) so they often owe money upon release and are subject to a city lien on them. Or if they come back, the county jail will take a percentage of the money you have on you to pay off the lien/owed money. I unfortunately had $200 cash on me and the county jail immediately took $20 from me as part of an intake/processing fee.

Local jails are part of the scheme also. Giving out free money just to be able to take it back.

[spontaneousbootay]

Meanwhile I got literally nothing the whole time even when I didn't work. A friend told me about a guy that he knew who had homeless people sign papers and he processed them for the money.

[Sir_Lagg_A_Lot]

When I first heard about the size of the stimulus, I joked to my friends that the government would need an army of accountants to keep track of where the money was going, because people would try to steal it.

[fredsmith]

a pile of money will attract scammers from miles around !!!

[thelitmedallion]

So many people got "help" that didn't need it and others were left holding the

[pixelsafoison]

All of this makes me shudder as a nursing student ... Because here in Belgium we're getting more and more cases of covid, and we already struggle with being supplied the necessary equipment. For instance we re-use FFP2 masks that we keep in a box just because there's not enough of them to just throw them away. You never know what kind of overgarnment you're going to wear because it depends on which department the hospital has pillaged, sometimes yellow, sometimes blue. Losing precious time by having to fully desinfecting monitoring towers with hella-violent chemicals simply because we cannot have one per room or dedicate one to covid patients. We're really not ready for round 2, it would be a full collapse.

[ethanallenhawley]

Regarding your discussion at 10:50, the banks collecting the applications received a kickback for processing applications. The banks were incentivized to accept the frauds.

[willh]

As someone who has worked in humanitarian/emergency projects for years I have to say that I did tell everyone what was going to happen. I said it before it happened, I said it when it was happening and I also said back in Feb/March 2020 that a day of reckoning would come.

Experience in my specific field is something that is just not valued. So here we are.

By the way, there's another huge refugee crisis building up in Syria. But not that anyone is interested in what I have to say, so I'll keep my head down and kick on with my own work. Have a nice day folks.

[youperguy]

We really need to stop calling them PPP loans. Nobody had to pay them back. They were handouts.

[akshaypatel]

In the uk we lost 40-70 billion in PPE fraud. A d even though the gov knows exactly who defrauded them they refused to do anything about it. Rich helping the rich as always

[wtywatoad]

It’s disgusting that multi-millionaires, such as Mark Wahlberg, and Robert DiNero got PPP loans for their business. Even the 80’s band, The Psychedelic Furs got a PPP loan.

[rnp]

Here in the UK, as you know, there have been questions about how the Government provided funds for PPE and almost anything else connected with the pandemic. I wonder if the amount of fraud equals or exceeds this.